Читать книгу The Dream Shall Never Die: 100 Days that Changed Scotland Forever - Alex Salmond - Страница 9

As the 100-day campaign approached, the scene was set and the political temperature was rising.

Thursday 5 June 2014

A game of Top Trumps with the US President. Think I may have won.

I’ve just announced the judge-led inquiry into the Edinburgh trams project. I fully expect this probe into the controversial project to lead the Scottish news.

My Chief of Staff, Geoff Aberdein, threatens to put my gas at a peep. He comes bounding into my office in the Scottish Parliament.

‘Obama’s come out for NO,’ he says.

‘What did he actually say?’ I ask.

‘He said NO,’ says Geoff.

‘Geoff, what did he say and where did he say it?’

‘Well, he was standing with Cameron at a press conference and he said that the UK was a strong ally which should be unified but it was up to the folks up in Scotland.’

‘Good,’ I reply.

‘How can it possibly be good?’ asks Geoff.

‘Three reasons – one he was standing beside Cameron. Two: Scotland likes to be talked about and three: these “folks” up here are nothing if not thrawn.’

I add: ‘So we say, one: Cameron begged for the support. Two: America had to fight for their freedom whereas we have a democratic opportunity. And three: it is indeed up to the “folks up in Scotland”.’

‘Anything else?’ says Geoff. ‘Add Yes We Can,’ I smile.

Staying in the Sofitel at Heathrow so that I can get to Normandy for the D-Day commemorations, at some unearthly hour tomorrow morning.

Dinner with John Buchanan, my security officer, and Joe Griffin, my principal private secretary. Also there is the really excellent Lorraine Kay, from my private office, who has just flown in from the USA. An English by-election sees the Tories hold from UKIP with the Lib-Dems losing their deposit. Much being made of the continuing tribulations of Nick Clegg.

Friday 6 June

Find myself on an RAF flight back from the D-Day commemorations in Normandy with Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband. Brings to mind a version of the balloon game and who should be pushed out of the plane first. Probably neither of them. They both have their uses.

Appropriately enough this has been, if not quite the Longest Day, then a pretty long one. I’d caught an early plane from RAF Northolt with Clegg (remarkably cheerful) and Miliband (remarkably pleasant).

It is, of course, undoubtedly the case that Nick is putting on an act for Ed’s benefit – to show how unruffled he is by the slings and arrows of outrageous by-elections. Meanwhile Ed is on his best behaviour, as there is little or nothing in his current performance to suggest that Labour will be able to govern alone.

There is no purpose in politics in offending someone, at least unnecessarily.

In turn, I am really cheerful (at least for 7 a.m.). I want to give the impression that, despite the 20-point-plus leads for NO in the referendum polling, I might just possibly have something up my sleeve.

Also there are the Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones, and Peter Robinson of Northern Ireland, for once and for obvious reasons, without Martin McGuinness.

We are taken across the Channel in a very comfortable BAe jet from the Royal Flight, which I would strongly recommend to all air passengers. Laughingly make a note to self: if things go well perhaps we could get one of these – Scotforce One!

I’m offered a very nice breakfast, but it’s too early for me. Anyway, I think: the food’ll be much better in France. Our flight was certainly easier than the one which the parachutists put up with on D-Day.

In virtually no time at all we are at Caen airport heading towards the prefecture where the delegates are assembled for the first of several church services.

The highlight of the first service is the consecration of a massive bell in the middle of the Bayeux cathedral. I meet my first veteran of the day, from Southport, who asks me if I am the one who is ‘causing all the trouble’. At least he says it with a twinkle in his eye.

On the walk from the cathedral to the cemetery for the second service the townspeople clap the D-Day veterans as they march forward in the sun. It is the first of a number of moving moments.

Foolishly having turned down some factor 50, and even more foolishly with no hat on, I am baked in a warm sun at the cemetery. However, the day is enlivened by some chats with the old soldiers from around the Commonwealth who are in robust form. And all of whom have brought their headgear.

I meet John Millin, son of Piper Bill, who featured in the film The Longest Day, and whose statue adorns Sword Beach. John tells me a couple of things.

First, despite sporting a set of bagpipes he is actually no piper but had promised his dad on his deathbed that a Millin would play at the unveiling of the Sword Beach statue. So he is able to play ‘Highland Laddie’, one of his father’s tunes from D-Day, and pretty well nothing else.

He also discloses the real sequence of events on D-Day. Millin did not actually volunteer for a suicidal piping recital, but when ordered by Lord Lovat to play a tune demurred, pointing to the King’s regulations aimed at stopping the demise of pipers in active combat.

‘Ah,’ breezed Lovat, ‘that’s English war office and doesn’t apply to us Scots – so just play.’ Bravely, Piper Bill followed this direct order and, with comrades falling like flies all around him, he miraculously escaped without a scratch.

The next day they asked some captured German snipers: ‘Why didn’t you shoot the piper?’

‘He was obviously a madman,’ they replied, ‘and the Wehrmacht is not in the business of shooting lunatics.’

So, not quite as represented in the film but a cracking story. Come to think of it, rather better than in the film.

Piper Bill’s role is duly celebrated in a pretty good pageant which is the centrepiece of the French commemoration at Sword Beach. Trouble is, they start an hour and a half late and have a dozen veterans lined up to meet the various heads of state, who all insist on arriving one by one.

The prospect of our heroes surviving D-Day only to be struck down by sunstroke at the commemorative pageant is too awful to contemplate. Fortunately someone has the presence of mind to get some umbrellas for shelter, although a French TV producer keeps pinching the veterans’ water bottles because she thinks they are ruining her best shots.

While we wait I take the opportunity to have a quick word with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is sitting just opposite me.

I start by suggesting that, given the President’s pronouncements, I might expel John from the Scottish caucus – the group in Congress that Senator Jim Webb has brought together to promote the Scottish interest.

He seems to think this suitably funny and tells me that we have a ‘big day’ coming up and that ‘it’ (presumably Obama’s statement) is ‘the least we could say’.

Things are just starting to get really interesting when Carwyn Jones comes up to get a photo and all revealing chat stops. Kerry’s last words to me are ‘Good luck’.

After Sword Beach we are back to Caen, where all heads of state take off in strict protocol order, Airforce One first. This means that the very pleasant Prince Albert of Monaco takes off before the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief of the General Staff and me.

We board a Hercules transport plane. The trip back is rather like the closing scene of Where Eagles Dare, with the top brass, Ed, Nick, Carwyn and me, sitting with our backs to the fuselage – and me wondering who should be jettisoned first.

Back to Northolt in double quick time before Joe and I fly on to Aberdeen. The crew are good sorts and for the final leg I am in the jump seat in the cockpit. They tell me that they did most of their flying time in Afghanistan, where the Hercules was the ideal aircraft: it has near-vertical take-off with a light load. This stops bandits being able to shoot at you – which seems like a pretty unanswerable argument.

Despite the best efforts of the crew and a very rapid flight straight up the North Sea to Aberdeen, the taxiing around the airport takes time and a dash to Inverurie mart has me arriving at 10.30 p.m. – quick enough for people to see me making the effort but not in time to address the Taste of Grampian dinner.

This is a great pity, since I had intended to open my speech with the line: ‘I apologise for my late arrival but Airforce One delayed my Hercules taking off from the D-Day landings at Caen airport!’

Saturday 7 June

A day at home preparing for the 100-day sprint to the line.

I have some time to think about Cameron’s pleas to everyone and their auntie for help against independence and about some people being daft enough to respond.

After the Obama ‘intervention’ we had been wondering who else Cameron and his crew would be successful in persuading to speak against us. We’d heard reports of the Foreign Office briefing against us and we expected that all significant leaders had been asked for their view. Galling, since we pay those people’s salaries.

But my hunch is still that it is good for YES and that is what I shall certainly suggest to Andrew Marr tomorrow.

Apparently Andrew Neil is tweeting that because I am on Marr then Nicola cannot be on the Politics Show – an illustration of the double-think that is now par for the course for the BBC. Clearly if one SNP politician is on one network programme, then we have exhausted our quota for the day.

Sunday 8 June

Use the interview on Marr to launch a further challenge to the Prime Minister to debate with me directly – First Minister to Prime Minister. He won’t, of course, but that is no reason for not issuing the challenge.

Interviewed down the line from the Marcliffe Hotel, my favourite hotel in Aberdeen. Indeed it is everyone’s favourite hotel in Aberdeen.

As it happens I helped Andrew with one of his first big stories in journalism.

Wind the clock back to 1982 and I was at the heart of the SNP 79 Goup’s* industrial campaign, and British Leyland at Bathgate was in terminal trouble. I had accumulated a great deal of material on how truck models were being systematically withdrawn from Bathgate to prepare for rundown and closure.

However, from the less than dizzy heights as assistant economist of the Royal Bank of Scotland, I was hardly in a position to release it myself. My solution was to give the story to a young Scotsman journalist – Andrew – who ran a very good three-part series based on the information.

As part of the job, Andrew came into 36 St Andrew’s Square to interview me. Behind my desk I had a framed copy of the first-day cover of a magazine called Radical Scotland, which featured a cartoon illustrating a quote from historian Tom Nairn: ‘Scotland will be free when the last Church of Scotland minister is strangled by the last copy of the Sunday Post!’

The depiction of a slightly panicky and very baldy meenister was not meant to be taken seriously.

Some six years later, when I was in Westminster, one of Andrew’s great friends, the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill, interviewed me and started his profile by suggesting that I was a very unusual Royal Bank economist, since behind my desk there was a copy of a Church of Scotland minister being strangled by a newspaper!

This led the local Conservative Association in Banff and Buchan to release a press statement saying that I wished to assassinate ministers of religion. The Press and Journal, delivered in those days to just about every home in my constituency, then put this nonsense on their front page.

As a newly elected member I was perhaps oversensitive about reputational issues, and a defamation action followed to bring the local Tories to heel, masterminded by my great friend and lawyer, Peter Chiene.

All of which is a reminder that stuff and nonsense in politics did not start with social media – it just makes it more immediate and more widespread.

Monday 9 June

Today is the day that the media has designated as the official launch of the 100-day campaign and so it is redolent with political opportunity. For my part I end up doing some personal polling in a golf club bar – and come away thinking we really can do this, despite the gap.

Nicola kicked it all off this morning with an all-women Cabinet and public question-and-answer session in Edinburgh. I take over in the afternoon and go back to Aberdeen to cover Sky and the BBC network.

I do the Sky piece from Nigg Bay Golf Club in Aberdeen, a municipal course with great views over Aberdeen harbour. Cheekily, someone – one of the green keepers I’m told – has hung a union flag on a fence in a vain attempt to get it into camera shot.

However, the guys in the clubhouse are very keen to see me, and after a few drinks I end up as an honorary member. It should be said that the folk in the bar are bang on a key YES demographic – mainly middle-aged, working-class men – but, even so, this crowd is a pretty easy and enthusiastic conversion to the cause.

I tell Geoff Aberdein in a phone call afterwards that, regardless of a general lack of encouragement in polls, I am confident that we have a real shot at this. The 100-day coverage also reinforces my view that as we move into the campaign period proper then the inevitable quickening of the pace will be of great benefit to YES.

Tuesday 10 June

I phone in to the YES campaign meeting tonight and find them a bit downbeat. Turns out that they’ve had access to a TNS opinion poll, which shows little or no movement to YES.

It is always a wonder to me that people in politics allow their morale to be affected by the latest opinion poll, instead of trusting their own political antennae.

It’s hard to give a pep talk down the phone, but I’m open and direct with my feelings: that we might not be there or even close, but everything is possible at this point. We’re not close to winning but we CAN win and the campaign has to believe that. Part of this confidence comes from my informal canvass in Nigg Bay Golf Club. My gut tells me that things are going pretty well.

Wednesday 11 June

Could be said that we held a Gunn to our own heads today.

Stayed in Strichen to cover the Oil and Gas UK conference in the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre. The speech goes well and I’m ready to face the cameras when I get a pretty panicky call from Geoff Aberdein to brief me on a self-inflicted wound.

For reasons (not altogether clear), my highly experienced special adviser [SPAD] Campbell Gunn decided to email the Daily Telegraph to inform them that Clare Lally, the ‘ordinary mother’ who featured in their coverage of the 100-day Better Together launch, was actually a member of Labour’s shadow cabinet and former Labour Provost of Glasgow Pat Lally’s daughter.

The first suggestion is correct, the second total nonsense. I know Clare personally. She is the mother of a quadriplegic daughter and a carers’ champion.

All of which wouldn’t have caused much of a stir in normal times, but what on earth Campbell thought he was doing emailing the Daily Telegraph is beyond my ken.

The paper is the self-appointed ringleader of a madcap old-fashioned media preoccupied in their conspiracy to discredit the YES campaign and all our works. There is therefore no point whatsoever in engaging with them or wasting time on them or explaining ourselves to them. Still less in sticking out our chin and letting them hit it.

The Telegraph, true to form, conflates Campbell’s foolish email with a story of the online abuse of Clare to concoct an attack. This is yet another episode in the claims of systematic online abuse from the YES side by so-called ‘cybernats’. In fact it is not ‘nats’, it is nuts. I deal with the TV interviews easily enough. I’m also asked about J. K. Rowling, who has given a million pounds to Better Together and has also been attacked online.

It is pretty obvious that the Clare and J. K. stories will now centre on the online abuse and there is next to nothing we can do about it. This story now has all the ingredients to take it beyond the Telegraph obsessions and into the tabloids and TV.

The connection with politics is coincidental. Internet trolls get their kicks by attacking anyone in the news about anything. In addition, the only research on the politics of this is by a Strathclyde University academic, Dr Mark Shephard, who has concluded in his interim report that the YES campaign is more of a target than a source of internet abuse.

However, the truth is that there is no high ground in this matter: any society and any subject is fair game for the pathetic clowns who get their kicks by abusing other people online behind the shield of anonymity. Most claims of the NO campaign don’t touch us: they are too exaggerated or just plain silly. This might.

I instruct Campbell to apologise at once and to make it clear that he distances himself from the online abuse of anyone at any time. Of course the ability to stop internet trolls is non-existent.

Let there be no doubt about the reasoning behind the Daily Telegraph attack. They would like nothing better than to force us off social media where we are dominating and back to a conventional campaign which we would inevitably lose.

Ironically the latest Survation poll from the Labour-supporting Daily Record confirms my hunch about the way the wind has been blowing, with 46 per cent YES and a big lead for the SNP in the party ratings for Holyrood. In my opinion it overstates YES support but does give an indication of the direction of travel.

* The SNP 79 Group was a ginger group set up after the rout in the 1979 election which argued for a declared left-of-centre programme from the SNP. One of its campaigns in 1981–82 was in support of workforce occupations of factories in the face of industrial closures. Although the 79 Group was defeated internally, many of its ideas strongly influenced the development of the SNP and many key members, including the author, went on to achieve high office.